What a Mighty God We Serve

By Larry Dixon [1] [2]

The Doctrine of God

God Has More to Do Than Simply Exist!

• “For an atheist to find God is as difficult as for a thief to find a policeman…and for the same reason.” (anonymous)
• “An unknown God can neither be trusted nor worshipped.” (Earl Radmacher)
• A little girl was drawing a picture and her daddy came up to her and said, “What are you drawing, honey?” And she said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” The father said, “But, honey, don’t you know that nobody knows what God looks like?” And she looked up from her drawing and said, “They will—when I’m finished!”
• “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Psa. 8:1)

You may have heard the story of the college student who was in a philosophy class where a class discussion was going on about whether or not God exists. The professor used the following logic:

“Has anyone in this class heard God?” Nobody spoke. 

“Has anyone in this class touched God?” Again, nobody spoke. 

“Has anyone in this class seen God?” 

When nobody spoke for the third time, he simply stated,

“Then, there is no God.”  

The student did not like the sound of this at all, and asked for permission to speak. The professor granted it, and the student stood up and asked the following questions of his classmates:

“Has anyone in this class heard our professor’s brain?” Silence. 

“Has anyone in this class touched our professor’s brain?” Absolute silence. 

“Has anyone in this class seen our professor’s brain?” 

When nobody in the class dared to speak, the student concluded,

“Then, according to our professor’s logic, it must be true that our professor has no brain!”

The student received an “A” in the class.

Many in our society are flunking Logic 101 because God has made His existence abundantly clear through nature, human nature, and history. But Romans 1 reminds us that wicked men (and women) “suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom. 1:18). The existence and certain qualities (attributes) of God “have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). Paul gets even more depressing in his description as to what natural man has done with God’s revelation of Himself in nature:

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.… They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen (Rom. 1:22, 25).

What a devastating critique! Men and women have “suppressed the truth by their wickedness,” “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images,” “exchanged the truth of God for a lie,” etc. And man is by no means innocent in this: he is “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20).

The Arrogance of Atheism

In his book, If There Is A God, Why Are There Atheists?, R. C. Sproul makes the point that “natural man suffers from prejudice. He operates within a framework of insufferable bias against the God of Christianity.” [3] Many do not believe in the God of the Bible because they know that if He is God, they are not! And their lives would have to conform to the will and purposes of a God they cannot control.

How do you deal with someone who dogmatically says, “There is no God!”? Let me suggest the following procedure. It is not foolproof, but it does have merit. The primary objection to the line of thinking I am about to give you will be discussed under “The Problem of Evil,” our last section in this chapter.

If you are talking with someone who says, “There is no God!”, you might use the following line of reasoning.

Let me ask you several questions, my friend. 

Okay. 

In your opinion, of all the knowledge that human beings could ever achieve, what percentage of that total knowledge do you think we presently have discovered? 

Oh, I don’t know. 

Take a guess! 

Well, how about 50%? Let’s say that we have gained 50% of all the knowledge that we could ever learn as a society. 

Okay. Next question: Of that 50% knowledge that we presently possess, what percentage would you say that you personally have? How much of that 50% do you know? 

Well, I don’t know. 

It’s okay. What would you guess? 

Well, I hate to sound pompous, but I would say that I have 10% of that knowledge! 

Wow, that’s great! That’s quite a bit of knowledge. 

Yea, my mother was always proud of the grades I made in school! 

I’m sure she was. My almost last question: Is it possible that outside your 10% knowledge of that 50% knowledge there might exist evidence of God? 

Hmmmm. I see what you’re asking. I guess because I don’t know everything, and our society has not yet learned everything there is to know, that I’d have to say, “Yes. It’s possible that outside my 10% knowledge of that 50% there might be evidence that God exists.” Yea, I guess I could say that. 

Congratulations, my friend! You are no longer an atheist! You’ve now moved into the category of agnostic! 

I have? 

Yes. An agnostic is someone who says, “I don’t know if God exists.” My absolute final question to you is: what kind of agnostic are you? 

What do you mean ‘what kind of agnostic’ am I? You mean, like Republican or Democrat? 

No, no. I mean that there are two kinds of agnostics: the first kind I call an eager agnostic—he’s the kind of person who says, ‘I don’t know if God exists, but if you’ve got some evidence, I’d sure love to see it!’ The second kind of agnostic I call an apathetic agnostic—he’s the kind who says, ‘I don’t know if God exists, and I DON’T CARE!’ Which kind are you, my friend?

The point we are making here is that no one knows enough to dogmatically declare that God does not exist. He can only say, “I don’t know if God exists or not.” And then we can provide some evidence to help him in his ignorance.

The Sadness of Agnosticism

The would-be “theologian” Woody Allen (who described himself as an “egg-nostic”) has said, “If only God would give me some sign that he exists…like depositing a great deal of money in my Swiss bank account!”

When someone asks for evidence of God’s existence, the Christian ought to inquire, “Well, what would you accept as evidence?” If they are looking for relief from hardship, or a visible manifestation of God before their eyes, the Christian can respond with the biblical teaching that God does not remove suffering to prove His existence nor necessarily provide personal demonstrations of Himself to convince skeptics. The real question is, what evidences has God already provided?

It is reasonable to assume that an infinite personal Creator would want to make Himself known to His creation, if indeed we have been created in His image. Has He made Himself known? From cover to cover the Bible declares that God has not remained anonymous. He has revealed Himself through general revelation (nature, human nature, and history) and special revelation (the giving of His Word through His chosen people Israel, the incarnation of His Son, and the Written Word of God, the Bible).

Agnosticism is sad because it is so unnecessary. We can know that the true God exists and longs for our companionship. The story is told of a brilliant but bitter agnostic writer who toured Europe with his wife and small son. He received honors from schools, royalty, and friends. After the family returned home, his son, impressed with his father’s fame, said, “Daddy, I guess pretty soon you will know everybody except God.”

There is a wonderful passage in Galatians which illustrates the issue of knowing God. As Paul writes to encourage these believers to stand strong in their freedom in Christ, he says in chapter four:

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? (Gal. 4:8–9).

Verse 9 is what I call “the theology of an afterthought.” Paul begins by referring to the Galatians’ knowledge of God and how that knowledge should prevent them from returning to idolatry. But he interrupts himself. What I hear Paul saying is that it is important for us to know God. But what is more important than that? That He knows us!

We have a wonderful motto here at Columbia International University: “To know Him and to make Him known.” That is great—but somewhat incomplete. A motto can’t say everything, but I believe that if the Apostle Paul came to speak at our chapel, he might look at the wall in Shortess Chapel and say, “You’ve forgotten a critical phrase: TO BE KNOWN BY HIM!”

The Certainty of Theism

There are good and sufficient reasons to believe in the existence of the God of the Bible. Not only do we see evidences of God’s design in creation, but there have traditionally been a number of philosophical arguments set forth to prove God’s existence. Theologians usually discuss four or five such arguments.

The Ontological Argument

The ontological argument for God’s existence is an argument from being. Anselm, a Christian scholar of the 11th century, said that God “is a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.” The argument is philosophical, and is nicely stated by Milne:

If God does not exist (i.e., exists only in the mind but not in reality), it is possible to conceive of a more perfect being than the most perfect being; that is an impossible contradiction. Hence we must accept the alternative; the most perfect being exists in reality as well as in the mind. [4]

The Cosmological Argument

The cosmological argument was stated by the 13th century scholar Aquinas. It says that the existence of the world requires a supreme being to account for it. Because every event has a cause, it is reasonable to assume a first cause, God. Some refer to this as an argument from “contingency,” that is, the only necessary being is God who has brought into existence the universe which is dependent on Him.

The Teleological Argument

The third classic proof of God’s existence is called the teleological argument. This argument says that there are evidences of design and purpose in the universe; therefore, it is reasonable that there is a universal Designer. This argument must deal with the problem of dysteleology, the existence of processes in the universe which seem destructive or relatively purposeless. [5]

The Moral Argument

The fourth classic proof for God is called the moral argument. Man seems to have an innate (built-in) sense of ought-ness. C. S. Lewis, although he was writing about a different issue, put this argument as follows. He said he wanted to make two points:

First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. [6]

As one writer puts it, “the existence of…objective moral values implies the existence of a transcendent Ground of values.” [7]

The Mental Argument

The fifth classical proof of the existence of God is called the mental proof. The argument here is that our minds are able to move from premises to conclusions, and the only adequate explanation of that ability lies in the existence of a transcendent Mind. Milne summarizes part of the force of this argument, “If there is no divine intelligence,…how can we trust our thinking to be true, and hence, what grounds can there be for trusting any argument advanced in support of atheism?” [8]

These classical proofs of God’s existence, the ontological, the cosmological, the teleological, the moral, and the mental, do not necessarily lead us to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As a recent Christianity Today editorial entitled “God vs. God” argued, “the classic philosophical arguments tend to yield a ‘maximal Being’ rather than the God of the Bible who loves His creatures passionately and hates corruption and oppression.” [9] We need a sixth proof for the existence of God, and it is called the Christological argument.

The Christological Argument

It should be clear to any honest investigator that we inhabit a visited planet! God Himself in the Person of His Son has come to planet earth. John the gospel writer says:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

One of the disciples, Philip, said to Jesus: “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us” (John 14:8). Note exactly what he was saying. He had a particular expectation which, he declared, if met by Jesus, would “be enough.” The problem was that he did not know what he already had! And what he had was already enough! Jesus replied:

Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say “Show us the Father”? (John 14:9).

When we use the expression “the certainty of theism,” we are attempting to make the case that there are good and sufficient evidences that the Creator is an infinite-personal Being who can be known. The Christological argument says that God has taken the initiative and become fully human in the Person of His Son. This is the One who, being “a mere man, claim[ed] to be God” (John 10:33), as the Jewish leaders charged. That’s because He was—and is—God manifest in the flesh.

The Trinitarian Question

Before we discuss the attributes of God, we must deal with the biblical teaching of the doctrine of the Trinity. Although our Jehovah’s Witness friends are correct in stating that the term “trinity” is not used in the Bible, the concept is a biblical one.

Indications of the Trinity in the Old Testament

The Old Testament indicates both God’s oneness (Israel’s shema, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” Deut. 6:4) and His plurality (“let us make man in our image,” Gen. 1:26; “the man has now become like one of us,” Gen. 3:22; “Come, let us go down and confuse their language,” Gen. 11:7; “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” Isa. 6:8). Jesus uses Psalm 110 to set forth His own deity and to defend Himself before the Jewish leaders: “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand.’” (See the account of His defense in Matthew 22:41–46).

Some suggest that the references to “the angel of the Lord” indicate that he is identical with, yet distinct from, God (Ex. 3:2–6; Judg. 13:2–22). And some biblical scholars believe that there may have been pre-incarnate appearances of Christ in the Old Testament (called a “Christophany”). My favorite passage concerns the brave Jewish young men named Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah (who are better known by their Babylonian names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego). Because they refused to worship King Nebuchadnezzar’s image of gold (no matter how many times the King struck up the band!), these young men were tossed into the fiery furnace (Dan. 3).

King Nebuchadnezzar was no dummy. He knew how to count to four. After having Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego tossed into the blazing furnace, he looked in and noticed that they were unharmed. He cried, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods” (Dan. 3:25). That fourth, we would suggest, was none other than the Second Person of the Trinity, before His incarnation, standing with His faithful servants in the flames!

Indications of the Trinity in the New Testament

In the New Testament, it appears that the principle of “progressive revelation” explains why we have more explicit references to the three-ness of God. From the baptism of Jesus where the Father spoke and the Spirit of God descended like a dove upon the Son (Matt. 3:13–17) to the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19 (“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”), there are texts in which all three members of the Godhead appear. Jesus speaks of Himself, the Father, and the coming Spirit in John 14:15–23. Part of Peter’s Pentecost sermon focuses upon the resurrection of Christ, the fact that “God has raised this Jesus to life…[and] he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear” (Acts 2:31–33). Paul’s benediction in 2 Corinthians is clearly trinitarian: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (13:14). The various works of each member of the Trinity is discussed in the powerful first chapter of Ephesians (1:1–14).

Christians believe in the doctrine of the Trinity not because they wish to be polytheists, but because there is clear evidence in the Bible of the Father being referred to as God (Matt. 6:8f; 7:21; Gal. 1:1), the Son being described as God (John 1:1–18; Rom. 9:5; Col. 2:9; Tit. 2:13; Heb. 1:8–10), and the Spirit being set forth as divine (Mk. 3:29; John 15:26; 1 Cor. 6:19f; 2 Cor. 3:17f; Acts 5). [10]

Two Errors Regarding the Trinity: Modalism and Tri-theism

Trinitarians must be careful of the two errors of modalism and tri-theism. [11] Modalism teaches that sometimes God is Father, sometimes He is Son, and occasionally He is the Spirit, but He is not all three at the same time. Tri-theism implies that there are really three, not one, gods. The great theologian Augustine put it well when he dealt with the term “person” in regard to the Trinity:

When the question is asked: three what? human language labors altogether under great poverty of speech. The answer however is given “three persons,” not that it might be spoken but that it might not be left unspoken. [12]

In his book Radical Commitment, the great apologist Vernon Grounds said the following about the doctrine of the Trinity:

Explain the Trinity? We can’t even begin. We can only accept it—a mystery, disclosed in Scripture. It should be no surprise that the triune Being of God baffles our finite minds. We should be surprised, rather, if we could understand the nature of our Creator. He would be a two-bit deity, not the fathomless Source of all reality. [13]

The Attributes of God

When we speak of the “attributes” of God, we must begin with a disclaimer. The disclaimer is simply this: we do not—or should not—attribute characteristics to God which He does not already possess. In the words of the skeptic Voltaire, “God made man in his image and ever since man has been seeking to return the compliment.” When we use the term the “attributes” of God, we are referring to the biblical characteristics of God which are revealed to us.

In his wonderful book Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis has one demon write another demon about the Christian’s concept of God, especially as revealed by prayer:

If you examine the object to which he is attending, you will find that it is a composite object containing many quite ridiculous ingredients.… For if he ever comes to make the distinction, if ever he consciously directs his prayers “Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be,” our situation is, for the moment, desperate. Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with a full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it—why, then it is that the incalculable may occur. [14]

The study of the doctrine of God (“theology proper”), I would suggest, is an ever-challenging pursuit of what the Bible truly says about God and not about what we think God ought to be!

Theologians are prone to divide the attributes of God into categories. They use terms like absolute and relative attributes, communicable and incommunicable [15] attributes, etc. We will follow the two categories suggested by Millard Erickson in his Christian Theology, God’s greatness and God’s goodness. [16] There are five attributes which should be considered under the category of God’s greatness: spirituality, personality, life, infinity, and constancy. And there are three major qualities which should be considered under the category of God’s goodness: moral purity, integrity, and love.

Attributes of God’s Greatness

God As Spirit

In an interesting dialogue with the Samaritan woman, Jesus declares that “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24, NASB). God is not composed of matter. Perhaps Paul is referring to God’s spirituality when he speaks of the invisibility of God in 1 Timothy 1:17, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.” It is so crucial to keep in mind that Invisible does not mean non-existent!

Because God is spiritual, He does not suffer the limitations of a physical body. Acts 17:24 indicates that “the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man” (RSV).

But what do we do with passages that seem to indicate that God has arms, hands, feet, nostrils, eyes, etc.? Theologians believe that these are anthropomorphisms, that is, attempts to say something about God through human analogies. Occasionally God appeared in the Old Testament in bodily form. The term used for a temporary manifestation of God in human form is theophany.

The Latter-Day Saints, otherwise known as Mormons, argue that God has a body of flesh and bone like us. They appeal to passages such as Psalm 37:24 (God’s “hand”), Numbers 11:23 (God’s “arm”), 2 Chronicles 16:9 (God’s “eyes”), Psalm 18:15 (God’s “nostrils”), etc. Rather than seeing these as anthropomorphisms, Mormons take these verses “literally,” failing to understand the spirituality of God. I think their argument can be responded to by using a passage like Psalm 17:8 which says, “Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.” If the language is not seen as metaphorical, then God becomes a big chicken! [17]

God Is Personal

God’s personality revealed through His names. God is an individual being and possesses self-consciousness and will. He is capable of feeling, choosing, and engaging in reciprocal relationships with other personal beings. One major indication of God’s personality is that He reveals Himself by His many names.

When faced with the task of confronting Pharaoh and asking that the people of Israel be set free, Moses was not worried about the Egyptians, but about his own people, the Israelites! He anticipates their rejection of him and his mission and asks the Lord, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” The Lord answers, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you’” (Ex. 3:14). God then instructs Moses: “Say to the Israelites: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation” (Ex. 3:15).

In a delightful and thought-provoking book entitled Wishful Thinking, Frederick Buechner defines various theological and religious terms. He defines words like “heaven,” and “anger,” and “devil.” Under the “B’s,” he even has the following entry:

BUECHNER: It is my name. It is pronounced Beekner. If somebody mispronounces it in some foolish way, I have the feeling that what’s foolish is me. If somebody forgets it, I feel that it’s I who am forgotten. There’s something about it that embarrasses me in just the same way that there’s something about me that embarrasses me. I can’t imagine myself with any other name—Held, say, or Merrill, or Hlavacek. If my name were different, I would be different. When I tell somebody my name, I have given him a hold over me that he didn’t have before. If he calls it out, I stop, look, and listen whether I want to or not. In the Book of Exodus, God tells Moses that his name is Yahweh, and God hasn’t had a peaceful moment since. [18]

The Scriptures are filled with the names of God. We are to “trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psa. 20:7b). Brand-new parents struggle with finding just the right name for their new child, sometimes picking a name that sounds good or that belonged to a respected relative. Hebrew names carried great meaning.19 A writer by the name of Morris Mandel somewhere makes the following point:

A name is made up of little promises kept to the letter. It is made up of faithfulness, loyalty, honesty, of efficiency in your work. In short, a name is the blueprint of the thing we call character. You ask, “What’s in a name?” I answer, “Just about everything you do.”

God’s personality revealed through His activities. God not only reveals His personality through His names, but also through the activities in which He engages. God had fellowship with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden (Gen. 2–3). God called Abram in Genesis 12, appeared to him in a vision in Genesis 15, and had a conversation with Himself (about Abraham) in Genesis 18 as He prepared to incinerate Sodom and Gomorrah:

Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him. (Gen. 18:17–19).

God initiated a relationship with Moses, the world’s first pyromaniac, by using a burning bush to get his attention (Exodus 3). He had numerous conversations with him, strategizing how the people of Israel would ultimately be released by the Egyptians (Ex. 4ff). Moses asked for and received the experience of beholding God’s glory “in a cleft in the rock” in Exodus 33:21. Jacob stated in Genesis 32, “I saw God face to face” (Gen. 32:30). We also read in Exodus that “the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend” (Ex. 33:11). Part of Moses’ epitaph is that he was one “whom the Lord knew face to face” (Deut. 34:10).20

We may be tempted today to think that God is inactive, when in reality He, through His Holy Spirit, convicts of sin, opens our eyes to understand Scripture, comforts our hearts, guides in correct choices, etc. On occasion, He may act in a miraculous, even observable, fashion. But we must be careful lest we think the only time that God is working or active is when there is some big act of power that comes out of the blue to meet some need in our lives.

There are those Christians today who seem to demand visible manifestations of God on a regular basis. I’m reminded of Yancey’s comment as he studied the history of Israel in the Old Testament:

Some Christians long for a world well-stocked with miracles and spectacular signs of God’s presence. I hear wistful sermons on the parting of the Red Sea and the ten plagues and the daily manna in the wilderness, as if the speakers yearn for God to unleash his power like that today. But the follow-the-dots journey of the Israelites should give us pause. Would a burst of miracles nourish faith? Not the kind of faith God seems interested in, evidently. The Israelites give ample proof that signs may only addict us to signs, not to God. [21]

The believer in Christ is challenged by Scripture to “live by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). Although we know that Christ will literally return to the earth and that all evil will be categorically dealt with at the end of time, His working “behind the scenes” should not be interpreted as inactivity. One might ask, “What further incarnations do we demand of Him?” He has acted finally in His Son—and we await His second public appearance!

God As Life

“If your god is dead,” proclaimed a sign in a 1970s Jesus rally, “try mine!” Thomas J. J. Altizer is perhaps the best-known of the “God is dead” theologians. [22] He continues to proclaim a kind of pantheism. The “God is dead” school teaches that God has diffused His being throughout the universe in a type of metaphysical suicide. Needless to say, these theologians do not acknowledge the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ!

The belief that God is life is set forth in many Scriptures. As we saw earlier, His name “I am” (Ex. 3:14) implies His life which was without beginning and is, of course, without end. Perhaps it surprises us, but the Bible does not argue for the existence of God. The Bible’s grand assumption is that God is very much alive. Those “who would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him” (Heb. 11:6, RSV).

God’s life is underived; that is, He needs no external source for sustaining His existence. John tells us, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). The independence of God is affirmed by Paul in the book of Acts:

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:24–25).

The points made by the Apostle Paul in those two verses above are packed with meaning. God does not need us—or our belief—to continue His existence. He is complete in Himself and does not need us. We do not give Him life; “He himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.” Notice that God’s independence does not equal indifference. It matters to Him what happens with His creation. He is the giving God who, through His grace and mercy, provides all human beings personal existence. The modern skeptic thinks that the Christian’s faith creates a god to meet his needs; the reverse is the case. It is the true God who is life itself who provides us with what we need to live! It is in the context of God as life that idolatry should be seen in all its idiocy. How foolish to worship gods made by man’s artistic skill.

God’s Infinity

Just before he died the psychoanalyst Carl Jung is reported to have asked: “The decisive question for man is ‘Is he related to something infinite—or not?’ This is the telling question of his life.” When we speak of the infinity of God, we mean that He is unlimited and unlimitable.

God and space. We can think of God’s infinity in terms of space. “Immensity” or “omnipresence” are two terms that have been used by theologians to indicate that, as someone writes, “wherever there is a where, God is there!” In fact, Erickson says:

It is improper to think of God as present in space at all. All finite objects have a location. They are somewhere. This necessarily prevents their being somewhere else.… With God…the question of whereness of location is not applicable. God is the one who brought space (and time) into being. [23]

Theologians speak of both the immanence (the nearness) and the transcendence (the separateness) of God. Jeremiah records the Lord asking, “Am I a God at hand…and not a God afar off?” (Jer. 23:23, RSV). The Apostle Paul speaks specifically to the immanence of God in Acts 17:

God did this [created man in order that he would dwell throughout the earth] so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. “For in him we live and move and have our being.” As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring” (Acts 17:27–28).

Those two verses (if you will forgive a ‘60s’ expression) really “blow my mind!” Paul uses pagan literature to make a theological point! He knew Greek prose and poetry and incorporates the truths he finds in such writing to argue for the findability of God! The transcendence of God is, perhaps, best illustrated by the Lord saying through Isaiah:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isa. 55:8–9, RSV).

Both the transcendence and the immanence of the Lord are reflected in Isaiah 57:15:

For thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite” (RSV).

The Psalmist asks the important question: “Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down upon the heavens and the earth?” (Psa. 113:5–6, RSV).

God and time. We can also think of God’s infinity in terms of time. Time does not relate to God. He is beyond, outside of time. God has always been and always will be. To ask how old God is makes no sense for He is the eternal One. The Psalmist expresses his wonder at the timelessness of the Almighty, “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God” (Psa. 90:1–2, RSV). Expressions such as “the first and the last” as well as the “Alpha and the Omega” (the first and last letters in the Greek alphabet) indicate God’s beyondness with respect to time (see Isa. 44:6; Rev. 1:8; 21:6; 22:13).

Even though God stands beyond and above time, it is important to realize that, as Erickson points out, God is nonetheless conscious of the succession of points of time. “He knows what is now occurring in human experience. He is aware that events occur in a particular order.” It must also be pointed out that “there is a successive order to the acts of God and there is a logical order to his decisions.” [24]

God’s Constancy

When we think of the constancy of God, certain biblical texts come to mind. The writer to the Hebrews declares that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (13:8). James says that with the Lord “there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). The Psalmist acknowledges the unchangeableness of the Creator as he considered creation:

In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. But you remain the same, and your years will never end. The children of your servants will live in your presence; their descendants will be established before you (Psa. 102:25–28).

We look at creation as fixed, permanent, stable. The Psalmist seems to compare it to a worn-out piece of clothing which can be discarded or replaced. There is no change with God; He remains the same.

Referring to Malachi 3:6, the great spiritual writer A.W. Tozer speaks to the issue of God’s immutability or unchangeableness:

What peace it brings to the Christian’s heart to realize that our Heavenly Father never differs from Himself. In coming to Him at any time we need not wonder whether we shall find Him in a receptive mood. He is always receptive to misery and need, as well as to love and faith. He does not keep office hours nor set aside periods when He will not see one. Neither does He change His mind about anything. God never changes moods or cools off in His affections or loses enthusiasm.… [God said] “I am the Lord, I change not.” [25]

Attributes of God’s Goodness

God’s Moral Purity

In the wonderful children’s story, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (the first volume of “The Chronicles of Narnia”), we read of Lucy about to meet Aslan (a Christ figure). She is greatly apprehensive about meeting him and says to Mrs. Beaver:

“Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” “Safe?” said her husband Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you.” [26]

The goodness of God is a major theme of the Psalmist. In Psalm 5 David states, “You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil” (see vv. 4–6); in Psalm 25 he declares, “for you are good, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord” (see vv. 7–10). We are challenged by the Psalmist in Psalm 34 to “taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him” (v. 8). We are promised in Psalm 84 that “no good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly” (v. 11, RSV). One should not be surprised that the only appropriate response to the goodness of God is praise:

Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s (Psa. 103:1–5).

Satan attacks the goodness of God right at the very beginning. He implies that God is not good, that God is “holding out” on Adam and Eve in prohibiting them from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “You will not surely die,” says the Evil One. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4–5). To paraphrase the Psalmist, it is as if Satan is saying, “All good things He will withhold from those who walk uprightly!”

We teach our children to pray, “God is great; God is good; let us thank Him for our food.” And we sing :

How good is the God we adore
Our faithful, unchangeable Friend,

Whose love is as great as His pow’r,
And who knows neither measure nor end. [27]

I suspect that for many of us the goodness of God lies at the foundation of our struggle to truly trust the Lord in all phases and circumstances of life. When I was a young believer, I remember the challenge to surrender myself completely to Him. In my mind I was afraid that if I completely committed myself to the Lord, if I said, “God, I’ll go anywhere and do anything You want me to do,” that I would have immediately heard a voice from heaven that would have said, “Aha! Now I’ve got ‘cha! Now I’m gonna’ send you into the darkest spot in the world where people have to eat what people were never intended to eat!”

I believe I suffered from a poor “theology proper!” A poor view of God and of His goodness can keep believers from trusting Him. [That’s why we need good Theologians and theologians!]

The goodness of God also indicates His absolute moral purity. In our summer crash course in Greek (affectionately known as “Kamikaze Koiné”) we eventually translate some of 1 John from the original language. In 1 John 1:5 we read:

Καὶ ἔστιν αὕτη ἡ ἀγγελία ἣν ἀκηκόαμεν ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀναγγέλλομεν ὑμῖν, ὅτι ὁ θεὸς φῶς ἐστιν καὶ σκοτία ἐν αὐτῷ οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδεμία.

Isn’t that great? Here is the translation. “And this is the message which we have heard from Him and are announcing to you (pl.), that God is light and there is no darkness in Him, no, none at all!” What is really happening here is that John is using the strongest expression possible in Greek to negate the idea that God has any darkness, any evil, in Him.

A number of years ago the following advertisement appeared in national magazines:

In this age of televangelists who sin, politicians who lie, athletes who cheat, billionaires who evade taxes, movie stars who assault policemen, baseball managers who gamble and teen idols who make home movies…isn’t it nice to know there’s still one thing that’s completely pure. Mazola 100% Pure Corn Oil.

Humorous, but sad, don’t you think? We have a God who is absolutely pure, free from sin, without blemish or any error.

As morally pure, God is marked by holiness, righteousness, and justice.

God is holy. Holiness is God’s uniqueness, His sacredness, His separateness. Exodus 15:11 asks, “Who is like thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee, majestic in holiness, terrible in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (RSV). There appears to be an entire category of angels who without a break cry out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” (see Isa. 6:1–4). Aren’t you glad you’re not one of those angels? [Perhaps that simply means we don’t understand God’s holiness as we should.]

Let us pause for a few moments on this attribute of God’s holiness. The French existentialist philosopher Sartre once said, “The last thing I want is to be subject to the unremitting gaze of a holy God.” A.W. Tozer declared, “Holy is the way God is. To be holy He does not conform to a standard. He is that standard.” Isaiah emphasizes the point that “The Lord Almighty will be exalted by his justice, and the holy God will show himself holy by his righteousness” (Isa. 5:16).

We suffer today not only from a neglect of holiness, but from what appears to be virtually a hatred of holiness! Holiness does not come naturally to us. The longing after holiness by the believer, I would suggest, is an uphill battle where our sinful nature, the devil, and the world around us gang up with each other to block our path—or shove us over the cliff! Oswald Chambers once asked himself, “Am I becoming more and more in love with God as a holy God, or with the conception of an amiable being who says, ‘Oh, well, sin doesn’t matter much.’?” If sin doesn’t matter much, then explain the cross!

Few Christians have paid attention to Psalm 97:10 which says, “Let those who love the Lord hate evil!” God hates evil—and we ought to as well. Jonathan Edwards is best known for his classic sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a sermon which focuses on the wrath of God. In another work entitled A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Edwards wrote:

A true love to God must begin with a delight in his holiness, and not with a delight in any other attribute; for no other attribute is truly lovely without this. 

God’s abhorrence of anything which contradicts His holiness merits serious study by the believer. [28]

God is righteous. God’s righteousness is His holiness in relation to other beings. God’s law expresses His righteousness, for it is as perfect as He is. Psalm 19 states:

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever; the ordinances of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether (Psa 19:7–9, RSV).

Whatever God chooses to do is right, for all His actions are in accord with His righteous nature. Abraham declares, “Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:25, RSV).

One of my all-time favorite passages is found in Jeremiah:

“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord (Jer. 9:23–24).

Godly boasting is boasting in God! These verses in Jeremiah challenge us to grow in our understanding of the character of God. He exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth. And please note: God delights in His own perfection!

God is just. God’s justice is the third aspect of His moral purity. This attribute refers to His requirement that others conform to His standard of holiness and righteousness. In Psalm 73 the Psalmist is overwhelmed with the prosperity of the wicked. Their arrogant, devil-may-care lives show no concern for the judgment of God. They scoff at God, saying, “How can God know? Does the Most High have knowledge?” (Psa. 73:11). It was not until “I entered the sanctuary of God,” says the Psalmist, “[that] I understood their final destiny” (Psa. 73:17). The justice of God must not be seen from a short-term perspective.

God requires His followers to show justice in their dealings with others. God commands us to “hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts” (Amos 5:15a). Rejecting their empty rituals, God demands, “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24). We are not to show favoritism in our treatment of others (James 2:9). We are to reflect the character of our God who is described by the Psalmist with these words:

You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more (Psa. 10:17–18).

God’s Integrity

When it comes to the issue of truth, God is not only true to Himself, but He tells the truth. Jeremiah 10 says, “The Lord is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King” (Jer. 10:10, RSV). Jesus addresses the Father in John 17:3 as the “only true God.”

God’s veracity means that He represents things as they really are. We are told in 1 Samuel that “the Glory of Israel will not lie or repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent” (1 Sam. 15:29, RSV). He is a God who “never lies” (Tit. 1:2). The writer to the Hebrews says that “it is impossible for God to lie” (Heb. 6:18).

God proves Himself faithful in all of His doings. One of the key passages that teaches God’s faithfulness or the fact that God proves Himself true is found in one of the most humorous events in Scripture. After Balaam had an interesting theological discussion with his donkey (Num. 22), he [Balaam, not his donkey] declares, “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Num. 23:19, RSV).

God’s Goodness: His Love

1 John 4 declares that “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8). He is the “God of love and peace,” says Paul in 2 Corinthians 13:11. God shows His concern for those He loves, seeking their ultimate welfare. The best-known statement about the love of God was made by none other than the Lord Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

I’m sure you’ve heard preachers preach on John 3:16. When they get to the word “so,” they usually hold their arms out wide to show the greatness or the largeness of God’s love. That’s not what John 3:16 teaches. The Greek adverb translated “so” [οὕτως, houtōs]is a word which really means “thusly” or “in the following manner.” When Jesus says, “For God so loved the world,” He is really saying, “For God loved the world in the following way…. He gave His Son.” The verse is speaking of the quality of God’s love, not the quantity of His love.

Under the category of God’s love we should also consider His grace and mercy. For our purposes it seems reasonable to distinguish these two terms from each other. Mercy is withholding judgment which is deserved; grace is giving what one does not deserve. Paul declares, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:8–9).

Note how both the kindness of God and His mercy are emphasized in Titus 3:

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy (Tit. 3:3–5).

We live in a cynical world in which many people feel unloved—and especially doubt the love of God for them. I’m reminded of the song by B. B. King who sang, “Nobody loves me but my momma—and she might be jivin’ me too!” “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us!” (Rom. 5:8). There is no better news than that!

Section Three: The Works of God

God the Creator

The story is told by Monsignor Ronald Knox, the biblical scholar, of a conversation with John Haldane, a scientist. Haldane suggested to Knox that in a universe containing millions of planets it was inevitable that life should appear by chance on one of them.

“Sir,” said Knox, “if Scotland Yard found a body in your Saratoga trunk, would you tell them, ‘There are millions of trunks in the world—surely one of them must contain a body’? I think they’d still want to know who put it there.” [29]

Who, indeed, put “it” there? A cosmologist is someone who deals with theories about the origin of life and the universe. The cosmologist Allan R. Sandage once stated somewhere:

Science cannot answer the deepest questions. As soon as you ask why there is something instead of nothing, you have gone beyond science. I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is the explanation for the miracle of existence—why there is something instead of nothing.

Creation “Out of Nothing” [30]

The term ex nihilo means “out of nothing,” and indicates the way in which God created the physical and spiritual universe. He “spoke” creation into existence. The writer to the Hebrews says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Heb. 11:3).

It is important to emphasize that God created matter. This was a difficult concept for Gnosticism to swallow, for it thought that matter was evil, and therefore could not have been created by the good God. It is also important to state that when we say God created the universe out of nothing, we are not giving “nothing” some kind of being or existence, as if “nothing” were really something! The film “The Never Ending Story” seems to do just that in portraying “the Nothing” as a force or power bringing destruction over the land.

We must also emphasize that God did not create the universe out of Himself. The universe is not an extension of the Being of God. This may seem apparent to Christians, but we live in an increasingly Bible-rejecting society that looks for any alternative to Christianity’s doctrine of creation. From ancient concepts of “Mother Nature” to contemporary expressions of belief in a “living” earth (sometimes termed “Gaia,” recently illustrated in a song by James Taylor), there appears to be a concerted effort to advance any and all competing views to Christianity. The biblical data emphasizes the distinction between Creator and creation, declaring that unregenerate human beings “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25).

Christian Views of Creation

There are a variety of views held by sincere Christians on the age of the universe, the length of the creation “days,” the relation of scientific data and biblical information, etc. Young earth advocates argue that the appearance of great age which we see in our universe (distance of star light, shale formation, etc.) might be explained through the effects of a universal flood (sometimes called “flood geology”). They also suggest that God created the universe and the earth with the appearance of great age (Adam was created as a grown man, for example). This approach emphasizes that the normal meaning for yom (“day”) in Genesis 1 is a literal 24-hour period of time (note the expression “and there was evening, and there was morning” in the text).

Old earth advocates (who are Evangelicals) agree with the young earthers that the book of nature and the Book of God (the Bible) do not conflict with one another, although the interpretations of both scientific and biblical data might be at odds with one another. Old earthers suggest that the universe is, perhaps, billions of years old. As Dr. Hugh Ross recently stated in his CIU forum, “Given only the scientific data, no scientist would come to a young earth view” (my paraphrase). He does not believe that the Bible demands a young earth view, but seeks to find evidences of design in creation to argue for the reasonableness of the Christian gospel.

Much more could be said about the competing creation views among Evangelicals. I would suggest that we are in an area here which I would term a “distinctive,” and that we should work with both camps in our collection of data, and especially in our presentation of the gospel.

Perhaps you have heard the following story:

A group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him. The scientist walked up to God and said, “God, we’ve decided that we no longer need you. We’re to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don’t you just go on and get lost.” God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the scientist was done talking, God said, “Very well, how about this? Let’s say we have a man-making contest.” To which the scientist replied, “Okay, great!” But God added, “Now, we’re going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam.” The scientist said, “Sure, no problem” and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt. God looked at him and said, “No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!”

How God brought creation into existence is less important, it seems to me, than that He brought creation into existence. And we are not doing Christianity a favor when we sling our “dirt” at fellow believers! [31]

Continuing Creation (Providence)

By “continuing creation,” we are referring to the doctrine known as providence. God’s continual care and sustaining of His creation is a theme reiterated throughout Scripture. He upholds the universe by the word of His power (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3). The seasons and the life-cycles of creation are said to be under His control (carefully read God’s dissertation to Job on creation in Job chapters 38–41). He is a God who “has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving [us] rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides [us] with plenty of food and fills [our] hearts with joy” (Acts 14:17).

Contrary to deism’s teaching that God wound up creation and then left it to run on its own, the biblical material indicates God’s continuous creative activity in the “natural” order. This on-going work of God even applies to human skills like farming (Isa. 28:24ff), metalwork, and other crafts (Isa. 54:16; Ex. 31:2–5), and even warfare (Psa. 144:1)! Milne aptly summarizes this important area of theology by writing:

To put the position more philosophically, God has called the universe into being out of nothing, and hence at every moment it “hangs” suspended, as it were, over the abyss of non-existence. If God were to withdraw his upholding Word, then all being, spiritual and material, would instantly tumble back into nothing and cease to exist. The continuation of the universe from one moment to the next is therefore as great a miracle and as fully the work of God as is its coming into being at the beginning. In this profound sense we all live every instant only by the grace of God. [32]

The Issue of Miracles

One difficulty which Christians encounter in the discussion of creation has been called “the God of the gaps” question. Traditionally Christians have inserted the term “God” into those areas which they could not explain “naturally.” He is the explanation for things which we do not understand. The problem is: What happens when science advances and is able to explain things which heretofore had no explanation? Does God get “squeezed out”? In his important two-volume work, The History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, A. D. White has tried to show that Christian concepts have slowly been replaced by secular “facts” (creation by evolution, demonic possession by psychology, etc.) [33]

We do ourselves no favor when we attribute to God only those things which present science cannot explain. As one writer points out:

The Christian perspective on the scientific enterprise lies not in finding God in various gaps in explanation, but in the awe which arises as we see the “whole thing” as his creation and gift. [34]

Perhaps here we Christians need to be more aggressive in our presentation of biblical truth. God the Creator has set into place natural laws for which we should be grateful. When science squeezes out God, it moves beyond its prescribed bounds of observation and into the arena of philosophical speculation. On this point C. S. Lewis comments:

Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else. [35]

Modern man cannot escape the fact that he has been made by the infinite-personal God of the Bible. The absurdity of the nature-only viewpoint becomes obvious from another comment of Lewis:

The Naturalists have been engaged in thinking about Nature. They have not attended to the fact that they were thinking. The moment one attends to this it is obvious that one’s own thinking cannot be merely a natural event, and that therefore something other than Nature exists. The Supernatural is not remote and abstruse: it is a matter of daily and hourly experience, as intimate as breathing. [36]

The one who turns away from Scripture’s truth about the Creator and His care and even intervention into His world is in a strange situation. Lewis reflects upon his own pre-Christian thinking:

I was at this time living, like so many Atheists or Antitheists, in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with Him for creating a world. [37]

Rather than looking at the universe as a closed system [38] which prohibits any direct intervention by the Creator, it is more reasonable to hold to an open universe in which He is sovereignly free to order His world in a different way. In such an open universe, science is not able to predict what can or cannot occur. It is shut up to its observations about the world of nature—and cannot declare supernatural interventions as impossible. [39]

Although a bit lengthy, Dorothy Sayers has written a helpful summary statement about creation which we should consider before we move to our consideration of a final issue, the thorny problem of evil.

And here we come up against the ultimate question which no theology, no philosophy, no theory of the universe has ever so much as attempted to answer completely. Why should God, if there is a God, create anything, at any time, of any kind at all? That is a real mystery, and probably the only completely insoluble mystery there is. The one person who might be able to give some sort of guess at the answer is the creative artist, and he, of all people in the world, is the least inclined even to ask the question, being accustomed to take all creative activity as its own sufficient justification. But we may all, perhaps, allow that it is easier to believe the universe to have come into existence for some reason than for no reason at all. The Church asserts that there is a Mind which made the universe, that He made it because He is the sort of Mind that takes pleasure in creation, and that if we want to know what the Mind of the Creator is, we must look at Christ. In Him, we shall discover a Mind that loved His own creation so completely that He became part of it, suffered with and for it, and made it a sharer in His own glory and a fellow-worker with Himself in the working out of His own design for it. That is the bold postulate that the Church asks us to accept, adding that, if we do accept it (and every theoretical scheme demands the acceptance of some postulate or other) the answers to all our other problems will be found to make sense. [40]

The Problem of Evil

“If God is the author of good, He is also the author of evil. If He is entitled to our gratitude for the one, He is entitled to our hatred for the other.”

So wrote the skeptic Percy Bysshe Shelley. When we discuss the attributes and works of God, we must deal with the problem of evil. Theologians use the term theodicy to describe the attempt to defend the justice of God in the face of evil’s reality. We will look at several elements of a Christian theodicy in a moment.

When we introduced the teleological argument for the existence of God, we noted the problem of dysteleology, that is, the presence of processes in the universe which seem destructive or relatively purposeless. Hurricanes, earthquakes, diseases, random acts of malevolence, all these combine to raise questions about not only the goodness of God, but even of His existence. To respond to those questions the Christian needs to have a biblically-developed theodicy, a term which brings together the Greek terms for “God” and for “justice.” How can the Christian defend the justice of God and yet acknowledge the reality of evil in His world?

Inadequate Theodicies

Evil is not real (Christian Science). One response to the problem of evil which does not help is that represented in the cult known as Christian Science. Its primary perspective is that evil is not real. A writer by the name of U. S. Anderson wrote:

As the first step in our discussion of evil, let us sensibly get rid of both the devil and hell. Make up your mind that the intelligence that exists behind the universe does not destroy itself! The pain-ridden idea of hellfire as a place of punishment for sin is man’s own morbid idea; evil is man’s own morbid idea; disease and suffering are man’s own morbid ideas. God does not know of the existence of these things. Since He created man free, He has left it up to man to conceive his own situations. And man has thought into existence all evil!

Anderson then quotes the following poem:

Thy life is an image inexorably cast
By the pictures that form in thy mind.

And that which thou see’st is that which thou hast.
See’st thou evil, and evil is thine. [41]

Evil is a form of good. Another perspective that does not seem to help is that evil is only a misunderstood form of good. Although he was arguing for the sovereignty of God, Alexander Pope’s well-known poem could be misconstrued to suggest that evil is only another form of good:

All nature is but art unknown to thee;
All chance direction which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony, misunderstood;
All partial evil, universal good;

And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. [42]

Do you agree that whatever is, is right? Of course not! The Bible teaches the reality of evil which cannot be re-defined into some form of good! Can God use evil to achieve His purposes? Of course. But that’s a far cry from the perspective that evil is only another term for good misunderstood.

Evil is real: God can’t do anything about it. The Christian answer to the problem of evil must acknowledge evil’s reality and the truth of God’s love and justice. One of the most helpful books I’ve read is that by Rabbi Harold Kushner entitled When Bad Things Happen to Good People. [43] I highly recommend his book, not because he comes out with a biblical response to the problem of evil (he does just the opposite, as I will show in a moment), but because his book shows how wrong-headed some of our pat Christian responses to tragedy really are. For example, he writes:

We have all read stories of little children who were left unwatched for just a moment and fell from a window or into a swimming pool and died. Why does God permit such a thing to happen to an innocent child? It can’t be to teach the child a lesson about exploring new areas. By the time the lesson is over, the child is dead. Is it to teach the parents and baby-sitters to be more careful? That is too trivial a lesson to be purchased at the price of child’s life. [44]

We Christians often want to provide answers to the soul-wrenching WHY? screamed out by grieving parents, shattered spouses, or traumatized children when tragedy strikes.

But Kushner’s answer to the existence of evil creates more problems than it solves. He says that he can far easier believe in a God who cares about the suffering of the world, but can do nothing to stop it, than he can accept the concept of an omnipotent God who looks upon suffering and refuses to act.45 In short, Kushner compromises the omnipotence of God. God is compassionate, but weak. There are situations over which He has no control—and over which He cannot take control! The Jewish scholar Elie Wiesel said of the God described by Kushner, “If that’s who God is, why doesn’t he resign and let someone more competent take his place?” [46]

Elements in a Biblical Theodicy

Biblical Christianity neither charges God with being the author evil nor sees evil as unreal or as another form of good. And although the Bible does not tell us all we would like to know concerning the origin of evil, it provides the most reasonable theodicy of all the world religions.

The world is not now what it was intended to be. First of all, the Bible teaches that this world is not presently what it was intended to be. As we will notice in our discussion of the doctrine of sin, the Bible attaches great importance to the space-time event of mankind’s rebellion against God in a real Garden of Eden (Gen. 3). There are indications in the Genesis text that Adam and Eve’s disobedience plunged the entire creation into a state of fallenness, so that the effects of sin in the areas of sociology, psychology, morality, botany, zoology, etc. are to be understood in that great fall (note carefully the outcome in those various areas as shown in Genesis 3:1–24). As one theologian put it, “If you say that man is not now what he should be and you deny a historical fall, then you must say that God is evil!”

Evil is not a necessity. Second, the Bible does not indicate the necessity of evil. Evil, sin, rebellion, and death are all intrusions into God’s good creation. The columnist Sydney J. Harris has said, “Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a ‘necessary evil,’ it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.”

Human beings make real choices. Third, the Bible posits the reality of human choice. Contrary to other philosophical schemes of determinism, the Bible nowhere indicates a fatalism in which Adam and Eve had to rebel against their Good Creator. As J. B. Phillips puts it, “Evil is inherent in the risky gift of free will.” The Bible teaches the doctrine of original sin (a doctrine we will examine in our study of hamartiology), meaning that all human beings (with the exception of Christ) have inherited an inclination away from God and His truth. As we survey our surrounding world, Micah’s testimony rings true: “Both hands [of man] are skilled in doing evil” (Mic. 7:3) Man is indeed ambidextrous in committing sin!

God has done something about sin. A fourth element of a biblical theodicy is that God has done something about the problem of sin. He has sent His Son as the sin covering, the satisfying work of atonement, for sin. His righteous demands have been satisfied in the cross-work of Christ for all who believe. Someone has said that sin must either be pardoned—or punished. And in Christ God has done both. He has punished His Son as our substitute so that we could be pardoned. The gospel teaches that Jesus Christ is presently being offered as God’s solution to personal sin.

Today is a day of grace. A fifth element of a biblical theodicy is that we are presently living in a day of grace whereby God’s judgment is being withheld from a deserving world. Although there are clear occasions in Scripture when God acted in swift judgment against sin (e.g., Num. 3:4; Acts 5:1–11), many texts reveal that He is longsuffering, “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9, KJV). The withholding of His judgment should cause people to turn to Christ, as Paul argues in Romans 2:4, “Do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?”

Evil will be finally judged by God. A final element in a biblical theodicy concerns the distasteful doctrine of hell. Christians believe that all evil will be finally judged by God and confined to a place outside the kingdom of God. It is not surprising that many reject the idea of eternal punishment, either thinking that man is too good to be condemned or God is too loving to condemn. Christian Science, for example, teaches:

To us, heaven and hell are states of thought, not places. People experience their own heaven or hell right here in proportion as they draw closer to the love of God or fall into the confusion and torment of dead-end materialism. [47]

The author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, once stated about hell:

This odious conception, so blasphemous in its view of the Creator, may perhaps have been of service in a coarse age when men were frightened by fires as wild beasts are scared by the travelers. Hell as a permanent place does not exist. [48]

Although we will look at this difficult doctrine more in-depth in our study of eschatology, I agree with G. K. Chesterton who said that “hell is God’s compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.” As another put it:

The only reason people are going to hell is because all life long they have told God they can live just fine without Him. God will say to those on judgment day who never said to Him in life “Thy will be done,” “Thy will be done—forever.”

In our next chapter we will look at what the Bible says about the doctrine of man, that creature described by the 17th century French mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal as a paradox of glory and wretchedness.

Notes

1. We saw in this series’ first article (“Developing a Distaste for Doctrine,” The Emmaus Journal 7 [Winter 1998]: 241-253) that Christians often do not pursue doctrine for various reasons. In our second article (“Learning to Listen: The Absolute Need for an Absolute Authority,” The Emmaus Journal 8 [Summer 1999]: 79-89) we looked at four sources people use for deriving their beliefs, concluding that only revelation (the Word of God, the Bible) should be our final source for our doctrine. In the third article (“Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? The Doctrine of the Person and Work of Christ,” The Emmaus Journal 8 [Winter 1999] 165-180), we discussed the historical evidence for Jesus, His humanity and deity, His works (amazingly leaving out any discussion of His miracles!), the atonement, His so-called “descent into hell,” His resurrection, and His ascension. In this fourth article we will briefly examine some of what the Bible has to say about theology proper, the doctrine of God.
2. Larry Dixon is a graduate of Emmaus Bible College and is Professor of Church History and Theology at Columbia Biblical Seminary and School of Missions in Columbia, South Carolina. He attends Woodland Hills Community Church in Columbia. This is chapter four in a series of articles entitled Back to the Basics: A. Fairly Serious Survey of the Fundamentals of the Faith.
3. R. C. Sproul, The Psychology of Atheism (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1974), 154.
4. Bruce Milne, Know the Truth: A Handbook of Christian Belief (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1982), 53.
5. In our last section of this chapter we will deal with the “problem of evil” and how it relates to the design argument.
6. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1960), 21.
7. Milne, Know the Truth, 54.
8. Milne, Know the Truth, 55.
9. Christianity Today (February 7, 2000): 34. This editorial discusses the debate between process and classical theologians and is well worth reading.
10. These references are found in Milne, Know the Truth, 60.
11. There are other errors into which Christians can fall. “Oneness Pentecostalism” has historically rejected the doctrine of the Trinity as polytheism (some even say that Trinitarians will go to hell). The evangelist T. D. Jakes is criticized in a recent issue of Christianity Today for his language that sounds like either Oneness language or a form of modalism (“T. D. Jakes Feels Your Pain,” Christianity Today (February 7, 2000): 58).
12. Quoted in Milne, Know the Truth, 61.
13. Vernon Grounds, Radical Commitment: Getting Serious about Christian Growth (Portland: Multnomah Press, 1984), 29.
14. C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1961), 22.
15. Sounds like a disease to me.
16. See Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996 edition), 265–319.
17. By the way, when attempts are made to say something about God by the use of animal analogies, we call such figures of speech zoomorphisms.
18. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking; A Theological ABC (London: St. James’s Place, 1973), 12.
19. How would you like to be called “Laughter” your whole life? see Genesis 18!
20. Perhaps the Apostle Paul was longing for that kind of intimacy with the personal God when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:12 that “now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.”
21. Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 48.
22. See for example, Thomas J. J. Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966).
23. Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 273.
24. Millard Erickson, Christian Theology, 275.
25. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (Kent, England: STL Books, 1976), 59–60.
26. C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (New York: Macmillan, 1950), 75–76.
27. Joseph Hart, “How Good Is the God We Adore,” in Hymns of Worship and Remembrance (Kansas City, KA: Gospel Perpetuating Publisher, 1960), #243.
28. I have gotten into this area of God’s hatred of sin and His holy wrath in the sixth chapter of The Other Side of the Good News (Wheaton: Victor Books, 1992).
29. Quoted by John Noble Wilford in the New York Times.
30. Bruce Milne’s discussion and outline is helpful in this section (see Know the Truth, 72ff). When we speak of creation ex nihilo, this is something referred to as “primary creation.” Scripture also uses the term “creation” for what might be termed “secondary creation,” that is, God’s use of previously created matter in the forming of man (Gen. 2:7) or the animals (Gen. 2:19).
31. These brief comments will probably be sufficient for offending all viewpoints.
32. Milne, Know the Truth, 74.
33. A. D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York: Dover Publications, 1960 [originally published in 1896], two volumes).
34. Milne, Know the Truth, 75.
35. C. S. Lewis, They Asked for a Paper: Papers and Addresses (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1962), 165.
36. C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1978 edition), ch. 6, p. 41.
37. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955), 155
38. Rudolf Bultmann’s comment here is important to note: “The historical method includes the presupposition that history is a unity in the sense of a closed continuum of effects in which individual events are connected by the succession of cause and effect.… This closedness means that the continuum of historical happenings cannot be rent by the interference of supernatural, transcendent powers and that therefore there is no ‘miracle’ in the sense of the word” (Rudolph Bultmann, Existence and Faith [New York: Meridian, 1960], 291–292).
39. We should be aware not only of the denial of miracle, but of its re-definition! For example, in his book Jesus Rediscovered, Malcolm Muggeridge comments, I believe, on the biblical account of the feeding of the 5000. “On one such occasion, we are told, Christ felt bound to provide food for them, miraculously turning some loaves and fishes a boy had with him into enough for the multitude. Or maybe—as I have sometimes imagined—it was just that, in the light of His words, those who had brought food with them felt constrained to share it with the others who hadn’t. If so, it was an even more remarkable miracle. Thus to transform what we call human nature, releasing it from its ego-cage, is the greatest miracle of all” (Jesus Rediscovered, 77).
40. Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 1949), 14–15
41. U. S. Anderson, Three Magic Words (Borden Publishing Company, 1978 edition).
42. “An Essay on Man,” from The Poems of Alexander Pope, edited by John Butt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), 515.
43. Rabbi Harold Kushner, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, (New York: Shocken Books, 1981).
44. Kushner, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, 24.
45. When we Christians speak of God’s not intervening in human evil, we need to emphasize that this does not compromise His goodness. The unbeliever H. G. Wells once commented, “If I thought there was an omnipotent God who looked down on battles and deaths and all the waste and horror of this war [WWI]—able to prevent these things—doing them to amuse Himself, I would spit in His empty face” (Mr. Britling Sees It Through, 1916). Christians do not believe in a sadistic God and are repulsed by the sentiment expressed in Shakespeare’s King Lear: “As flys to wanton boys are—We to the gods—They kill us for their sport.”
46. Quoted in Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 179.
47. Questions and Answers on Christian Science (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1974).
48. Quoted in Harry Buis, The Doctrine of Eternal Punishment (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1957), 128.